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Paying Off Student Loans? This App Can Help

Recent grads may very well agree that student loan debt is like the bastard child of the collegiate experience: unexpected, unwanted and very expensive for years to come.

Debt is hard enough to recover from, and owing multiple student loans only aggravates the situation. But Tuition.io has found a way to streamline the process, and it's swiftly elevating the way we manage and repay dreaded student debt.

Brendon McQueen and Steve Pomerantz tapped into the rapidly increasing propensity for personal and team organizational tools (e.g., Evernote and Asana) when they launched Tuition.io into public beta in January 2013.

The startup's decidedly punny name (you pronounce the "i-o") doesn't detract from its mission, either. Call it whatever you like — Mint for students, personal finance platform, a student loan management tool or a god-send — Tuition.io focuses on simplified loan aggregation and is dedicated to helping students understand their entire student loan history, like what they owe, whom they owe, and how to pay it back.

Both the site and its blog capitalize on clean design and aspirational, easy-to-understand language.

When you log in, snapshots of your monthly payments house information like how to contact each lender, how much interest you'll pay over time, and charts and graphs that show your repayment history and projections. An interactive tailored advice engine even recommends actions you should take regarding each of your loans ("How much money can you afford to spend each month?").

As the questions surrounding higher education only continue to grow (Is a college education still worth it? Is higher education the new housing bubble?), Mashable spoke with McQueen about student loan trends, keeping up with opportunity and Tuition.io's future plans.

Q&A With Tuition.io CEO and Co-Founder Brendon McQueen

How did you come up with the concept for Tuition.io?I graduated from Columbia in 2009, and I had 12 separate student loans. I couldn't even figure out who I owed cash to, or how much I owed them, or if I had any options at all. All of this stems from my own huge problem. It turns out that this is a huge problem for a ton of people — 37 million people in America. That's about two-thirds of every graduating class out of college, and as you probably know, outstanding student loan debt in America is hovering right at $1 trillion.

So you needed a solution and thought this would be a great tool for everyone.Exactly. If you think about how much people incur in terms of their student loan debt, overall, the outstanding debt is higher than credit card debt, auto loan debt … It's something that people should take incredibly seriously because it can affect your credit. It's something people should get more educated on to figure out their options.

What kind of trends have you seen in student loans so far?Student loans have become more and more on people's minds — from politicians to employers to schools. There's a general trend that something has to happen here. In terms of our own trends, since April, our site has helped people pay down $6 million in student loan debt. That's pretty cool. Our site, since launching in January, has over $700 million in outstanding student loan debt on the platform. That's pretty exciting, too.

Did you know it was going to take off like that?I had a hunch. It points to the trend, as I was saying earlier, that people are starting to take this a whole lot more seriously, in terms of just having a handle on their debt.

Is it difficult to stay connected to Tuition.io once you join?

"If you owe a ton and your income isn't that high, what people tend to do is ignore the problem."

Our team spent a lot of time thinking about and trying to tackle helping people stay on top with it over time, because in general, if you owe a ton and your income isn't that high, what people tend to do is ignore the problem. So we have engagement emails that keep people up to date, and we'll say, like, "Hey! Congratulations, you just paid on your loan and you're making progress," or "Hey, you haven't been paying. Here are a couple options to help you improve your situation." So it's important for us to make the experience interesting for our users, of course. A lot of the other established financial centers, like traditional banks, aren't necessarily interested in keeping everything transparent and keeping you up to date.

Does Tuition.io have future plans to expand or to try to compete with more generalized financial management tools, like Mint?I think there are a ton of interesting avenues to pursue here, but at current, our company and our team are laser-focused on student loans.

What do you think is Tuition.io's greatest challenge?Our greatest challenge is trying to keep up, in terms of pace, with the opportunity out there surrounding student loans — everything from hiring to finding engineers who are passionate about this space. That's the hardest part for us, seeing all the opportunity out there and just trying to keep up with it as a growing company. It's incredibly important to find people on your team who are passionate about the problem you're solving.

What would you say is Tuition.io's next step?Well, obviously growth and more hiring, and also implementing more ways for our users to actively improve their situation. I would say expanding the product offering, even though that's kind of gray. That's all I can say right now.

Is mobile in your future?For sure. I'm extra excited about taking it mobile.

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